


Picking Up the Pieces

by Meme_Loving_Trash



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Break Up, Established Relationship, Infidelity, M/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12707628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meme_Loving_Trash/pseuds/Meme_Loving_Trash
Summary: Keith and Lance have been together for a while, and, well, a while is a pretty long time. And sometimes Life is incompatible with Relationships, or people are, at least, and sometimes everything falls apart slowly instead of all at once and really all you can try to do is make sense of it all in hindsight as you watch the pieces fall around you.And after everything's come apart, you can't really do much besides move on, can you?Unfortunately, that is just as hard as it sounds.





	1. Chapter 1

**November**

 

The night starts as innocently as any other.

 

Lance pushes open the door to his apartment, and like always he has to shove his shoulder against the wood as it sticks against the frame. Red and Blue run to greet him as he steps through the door, like always, and like always he stops to give each cat a scratch behind the ears before kicking off his shoes and dumping his school bag in a kitchen chair.

 

Just like always.

 

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

 

**HUNKALICIOUS: Hey man, you coming tonight?**

**ME: cant got thesis shit to work on**

**PIDGEOT: Laaaaaaaame**

**ME: tell me about it**

Lance clicks the phone off and slips it back in his pocket, casting a scowl over at his bag. He would much rather spend the night drinking with his friends, but duty called. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. His gaze wanders over to the kitchen counter, where several half-empty bottles of Jack Daniels stood at attention. At least that would make the night a little more bearable.

 

He had just finished pouring himself a shot of whisky over ice when the door clicks open again and Keith walks in. “Hey, babe,” he calls as Keith sweeps into the kitchen.

 

HIs boyfriend’s scowling. Great. Just what Lance feels like dealing with tonight. Keith’s scowl deepens as he catches sight of the drink in Lance’s hand, and maybe he was just stressed out from school, or maybe it was the fact that Lance hadn’t had anything to drink in almost twenty four hours which was about twenty four hours too many, or maybe it was the fact that last night Keith had slunk home at 3am _again_ and this time he had smelled like cheap cigarettes Lance didn’t smoke and cheap liquor that Lance knew Keith didn’t drink and he’s just so _tired,_ but Lance finds himself rising to the bait. 

 

Just like always.

 

“What?” he snaps.

 

“What, what?” Keith answers stiffly, refusing to look in Lance’s direction.

 

“I mean, what’s with the look?”

 

“What look.”

 

“The one you’re making right now.”

 

“I’m not making a look.”

 

Lance rubs his forehead with his free hand. He _really_ doesn’t want to fight with Keith tonight, but it doesn’t look like he’s getting much of a choice. “Don’t bullshit me, Keith.”

 

Keith tosses his head, finally turning to look at Lance. “It’s nothing,” he says unconvincingly before turning back away. “Did you put the dishes away like I asked you to?”

 

Lance groans. “No, I forgot. Sorry.”

 

Keith mutters something under his breath.

 

“What?” Lance snaps again. Like a broken record.

 

Lately their relationship has felt like one big broken record.

 

He sees Keith grip the counter’s edge hard for a moment before he turns around again. “I said, _typical.”_

“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lance demands.

 

“Just that every single _fucking_ time I ask you to do something you _forget_. It wouldn’t kill you to help out some more around here, you know.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Lance snaps. “I help out plenty! I cleaned the bathroom yesterday!”

 

“Yeah, after I asked you to _seven times_!”

 

Lance doesn’t have a comeback for that. He scowls into his drink, but Keith apparently isn’t done talking. _Typical._ “Were you drinking? Is that why you _forgot_?”

 

“Fuck off!”

 

Keith huffs a humorless laugh. “Thought so.”

 

“What the fuck do you know?”

 

“I know that every single fucking time I turn around I find you with a fucking drink in your hand!” Keith nods at the whisky in Lance’s hand, and he self-consciously sets it on the counter behind him. “Like now.”

 

‘Yeah, well, you’re no saint either,” Lance snarls. “ _I’m_ not the one that spent a _hundred and fifty_ dollars at Lush last weekend.”

 

“Well, _excuse_ me for taking care of myself,” Keith answers scathingly. “Wish I could say the same for you.”

 

Lance ignores the jibe. “Don’t know why you fucking bother.” He narrows his eyes. “Unless you’re trying to look nice for _someone special.”_

Keith freezes, and when he speaks again his voice is low and dangerous. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Think about it, _babe_ ,” Lance spits.

 

“If you think I’m _cheating_ on you—”

 

“ _Bullshit_ , Keith!” Lance yells, drink forgotten, striding forward and grabbing Keith roughly by the shoulders. “I have fucking eyes! I can fucking see what’s happening right in fucking front of me! I’ve seen you guys together! His hands were all over you! What kind of _fucking idiot_ do you take me for?!”

 

“Lance—get _off_ —you’re hurting me!” Keith gasps, and Lance doesn’t realize that he was shaking Keith or that he was digging his nails so hard into Keith’s skin that he was drawing blood until the other boy shoves him away, eyes blazing. Lance stumbles backwards, breaking his fall against the counter and meeting Keith’s eyes with a glare.

 

“Get out.” Keith’s voice is quiet.

 

So Lance does.

 

He gets maybe five hundred feet before he realizes that he has. No Fucking Clue where he’s going.

 

He sure as hell isn’t going home anytime soon, that’s for sure. He’s practically seeing red. It was bad enough that Keith was cheating on him, but for him to lie like that, right to his face…

 

HIs phone chirps and he glances at it, half-expecting it to be Keith, but it isn’t. It’s a snap from Pidge, her arm around Hunks neck and throwing a peace sign at the camera, but Lance is more focused on the table and the liquor bottles right behind them.

 

And just like that, Lance realizes something.

 

He wants the comfort of his friends, but more than that, he wants a drink.

 

“Lance! Bro! You made it!”

 

He’s enveloped by Hunk’s patented bear hug the second he walks through the door. It feels nice in a way that only Hunk’s hugs ever could, and it’s enough to make him laugh for a second as he untangles himself from his friend’s arms. “Hey, man.”

 

“Thought you weren’t gonna come tonight,” Hunk beams. Then he catches sight of Lance’s face. “You ‘kay, man?”

 

“Keith and I had a fight,” Lance says bluntly. It’s no use lying to Hunk. The man knew him too well and would manage to weasel it out of him eventually. “It got…pretty bad.”

 

“Damn son. You gonna be alright? You wanna talk about it?”

 

Lance sighs. He came here to _escape_ Keith, not talk about him. “Nah, man, I’ll be fine. Just gotta let him cool off for a bit, y’know?” Hunk looked unconvinced, and Lance forces a smile. “Besides, I’ll bet he’ll be calling me any second now. You know him, he can’t stay mad for long.”

 

He wishes he felt more confident than he sounded.

 

The phone doesn’t ring.

 

Three shots in, Lance starts to realize that he _might_ have fucked up a little bit.

 

Or a lot.

 

So he drinks, and the phone still doesn’t ring.

 

Four shots later, Lance thinks that he really should call Keith.

 

Except that the warmth buzzing through his veins isn’t enough yet to melt the ball of anger and hurt in his gut, and he still has enough control over his impulses to be petty.

 

So he takes another shot, and the phone stays silent in his pocket.

 

Whatever amount of shots later--he’s at what, ten? Twelve? He lost track a while back—Lance is holding pizza in one hand and a beer in the other and he honestly isn’t sure when he grabbed either of them but he must’ve at one point because they are definitely there.

 

He thinks that he really, really, wants to call Keith.

 

He almost drops the beer and then the pizza as he fumbles around in his phone for his pocket—wait, no, that’s backwards—his pocket for his phone and when he finally has it in his hand he has to try three different times to type in his passcode because his fingers don’t seem to want to cooperate and it kind of feels like his head is going to float off his shoulders and he has to try _really_ hard to read the names in his contacts until he finds…he finds…

 

The phone falls from his hand and clatters to the floor. Lance watches it, but he can’t seem to convince himself to make the move and pick it up. He eventually settles for leaning back in the couch—when did he sit down?—and chugging the rest of his mysterious beer that appeared out of nowhere.

 

 The phone’s screen is still stubbornly blank, but he’s too far gone to care at this point.

 

He comes to to the taste of vomit, and he realizes that he’s kneeling in Hunk’s bathroom, leaning over the edge of the tub as he retches over and over and over again. Pidge is next him and she’s rubbing his back as he pukes, and he watches her mouth move for almost a full minute before he registers that she’s actually talking to him. “… _not_ driving home like this,” she’s scolding him, and he’s confused because he has no idea what she’s talking about, but that really wasn’t any different than usual.

 

“S’course not,” he tries to say, but his tongue seems to be getting in the way of him speaking. “M’drunk.”

 

Pidge rolls her eyes again, and she mutters something that Lance can’t understand since her voice is fading in and out like radio static, but he catches Keith’s name in there somewhere and for some reason the name makes him tense.

 

Lance groans, resting his cheek on the cool porcelain and almost crying with relief. “Don’t,” he pleads. He still has no clue what she’s talking about but he knows that anything involving Keith right now is a very, very bad idea.

 

“Lance, what even happened—”

 

The floor tips dangerously below him and suddenly he’s puking again, his stomach churning and roiling as it protests the night’s abuse and the last thing he’s conscious of is Pidge’s hand on his back and a voice that almost sounds like his own murmuring Keith’s name--

 

When he comes to he’s staring at unfamiliar ceiling on a slightly more familiar couch, and he thinks that he really should be getting home soon, since he has just enough sense back to remember why, but the second he tries to sit up the room spins around him and he falls back. He tries to get up again, he really does, but the fabric of the couch is rising up to engulf him or maybe he’s being dragged down into it, and he knows that there’s no use fighting it so he closes his eyes, letting the swaying of the room comfort him as he melts into the furniture.

 

When Lance comes to again he swears the world is ending.

 

His head is pounding, his mouth feels like a desert, and he isn’t convinced that he didn’t get run over by a train. _God,_ how much did he drink last night? He tries to think back but his thoughts are still sluggish, and his arm doesn’t quite feel like his own as he drapes it over his eyes.

_Christ_ , is he _still_ drunk?

 

Thinking makes him sick to his stomach again, so he closes his eyes and drifts back to sleep.

 

When Lance wakes up again, it’s to Pidge shaking his shoulder and a weaker conviction that the sky is about to fall in. “Hunk and I are going to Denny’s with some of the other guys,” Pidge whispers. “You want in?”

 

The thought of food makes his abused stomach churn, and he shakes his head.

 

“Fine.” He hears the frown in Pidge’s voice. “But I want to see you drink this before we go.” A cool bottle presses into his hand.

 

“Thought Hunk was the mom friend,” Lance mumbles, but takes a swig regardless. Gatorade. By the time he finishes it his stomach is slightly more settled and he feels marginally more like a human being. “Thanks, Pidge.”

 

She sits down on his legs. “Hey, what happened last night? With you and Keith, I mean.”

 

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Lance mumbles.

 

“ _Lance—”_

_“Pidge—”_

“Fine,” she sighs again, getting up.  “But you can’t avoid him forever, you know.”

 

“Watch me.”

 

If only it were that easy.

 

It’s almost noon by the time Lance makes his way to the apartment again. His hangover is mostly dissipated but he’s still in a shitty mood, which isn’t helped by the fact that he now has to confront his boyfriend and apologize for what happened last night.

 

The first thing he notices as he steps through the door is that all the lights are off. He frowns as he flicks the hall light on. “Keith?” he calls tentatively. “Babe? You home?”

 

Blue barrels around the corner as soon as the light’s turned on, and she skids to a stop and twines herself around his feet, chirruping. “Hey, you,” he says, leaning down and scooping the white cat into his arms. “Are you hungry or something?”

 

She glares at him in an irritated sort of way. _Of course, dumbass,_ her blue eyes seem to say.

“Didn’t Keith feed you?” He frowns. Ok, Keith might be pissed at him, but that was no excuse to take it out on his innocent cat. He makes his way into the kitchen, as he’s leaning down to fill Blue’s bowl, a glint of silver catches his eye.

 

A house key.

 

His stomach drops to the floor.

 

“Keith?” he calls again, his voice rising. “Keith, answer me, please?”

 

Silence.

His thoughts are racing a mile a minute as he walks into the living room. Everything _looks_ okay, at first glance, but as he starts to really _look_ he realizes that there are things that are pretty conspicuously missing.

 

Like Keith’s school bag.

 

And his laptop.

 

And Red.

 

_Fuck._

 

He races to their room and throws the door open.

 

_Shit._

Keith’s side of the closet is empty.

 

“Fucking _shit_ ,” Lance groans, sitting heavily on the bed.

 

Keith’s stuff is gone.

 

And so, it seems, is Keith.

 

 

Keith doesn’t answer his phone, and panic starts to set in.

 

Lance tries to text him.

 

And then calls him again.

 

And again.

 

And again.

 

“C’mon, pick _up,”_ Lance groans, and almost screams as Keith’s voicemail message starts playing again. “Keith, please stop ignoring me. Call me when you get this. Please,” he pleads for the third fourth fifth time. “I love you.”

 

An hour goes by. Keith doesn’t call.

 

Lance is driving himself crazy, pacing anxiously around the apartment with one eye on his phone. _Idiot idiot idiot idiot,_ he insults himself over and over until the word loses meaning.

 

The key on the counter mocks him.

 

Then he stops. Shiro. He must know where Keith’s gone. Maybe he can get him to come home. He whips out his phone and dials the number, and breathes a sigh of relief when someone actually answers.

 

“Hello?” Shiro sounds resigned rather than confused, and that enough tells Lance all he needs to know. But he asks anyway.

 

“Shiro? It’s Lance. Have you seen Keith?”

 

“Umm…”

 

Lance sighs. “Is he there?”

 

“Uhh…”

 

Lance rubs his forehead with one hand. “Can I talk to him?”

 

Silence for a second, and for a heartbeat Lance is convinced that he’ll say yes. Then-- “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Lance.”

 

“Fine.” Lance scowls. _Be that way._ “Can you just tell him to call me, please? I need to talk to him.”

 

“Yeah, I will.” That much, at least, sounds sincere. “Sorry, Lance.”

 

“Yeah,” Lance mutters. “Me too.”

 

He hangs up, and his head is spinning again, but this time it has nothing to do with anything he’s been drinking.

 

Keith is gone, and he might never be coming back.


	2. Chapter 2

The moment the door slams shut behind Lance, Keith thinks he’s going to throw up.

 

He sinks into a kitchen chair, his head in his hands, letting shudder after shudder run through him.

 

What...just happened?

 

(He knows exactly what happened.)

 

Red leaps into his lap and settles there, purring, and he starts to stroke the ginger tabby absentmindedly as he thinks, his thoughts coming a little easier as the adrenaline high starts to fade.

 

He had come home to find Lance drinking, _again_ , and to find that Lance hadn’t done with Keith asked him to do, _again,_ both of which would understandably piss anybody off, especially considering that he was literally doing all the housework around the apartment and it was starting to seem like Lance was with a drink more often than he was without. That would piss anybody off right? And Lance is getting his Ph.D., for Christssake, it isn’t like the guy can afford to sit around and kill brain cells.

 

Four years Keith has been dealing with this shit.

 

(And maybe four years has been enough?)

 

The thought has been bugging him for a while now. And the fighting has been getting worse and worse and now it’s almost constant, and—

 

_Unless you’re trying to look nice for_ someone special.

 

Keith flinches as Lance’s words echo in his head.

 

(Well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?)

 

He stands suddenly, displacing Red, who shoots him an annoyed glare as she stalks away. Looking around at the empty apartment, he realizes that he’s kind of started to hate this place and everything it stands for.

 

(And who’s fault is that, _Keith?_ )

 

And he really, _really_ , doesn’t want to be home when Lance gets back.

 

So without pausing too long to really think about whatever the hell it is that he thinks he’s doing, he shoves his laptop in his bag and whatever clothes will fit in a suitcase, and coaxes Red into her cat carrier, and dumps the contents of all of Lance’s liquor bottles down the kitchen sink, just because he can. (It’s petty and he knows it, but hey, it’s pretty damn satisfying.)  Then he fishes his keys out of his pocket and wrestles the apartment key off its ring and leaves it on the counter where he knows it will be seen, and grabs his clothes and his bag and his cat and locks the apartment door behind him as he leaves.

 

Keith’s brother only lives about half an hour outside of the college town where Lance and Keith had had their apartment, but it’s still pretty late by the time Keith finds himself on Shiro’s doorstep, bags slung over his shoulder and cat carrier held loosely in his hand.

(He feels almost like the Virgin Mary, begging for shelter at the inn, baby Jesus in the cat carrier.)

 

(Except that he most definitely isn’t a virgin, and the last time he checked Jesus didn’t have paws and a tail.)

 

(An image of Jesus as a Furry pops into his head, which he is sure is only slightly blasphemous.)

 

He’s saved from this line of thought as Shiro opens the door, blinking in surprise when he registers who it is. “Keith? What are you doing here?”

 

“Hey, Shiro,” Keith forces a smile. “Hate to bug you, but Red and I kind of need a place to crash for a few days.” He holds up the cat carrier and puts on what he hopes is a winning smile.

(Fowgive them Fathew, fow they knyow nyot what they do >w< )   

 

(He doesn’t actually know that much about furries.)

 

(Or Jesus, for that matter.)

 

Shiro stares at him for a long moment. “Why don’t you come in?” he says eventually.

 

Keith does and sets down the carrier and his bags as Shiro shuts the door behind him. “Care to tell me what this is about?” his brother asks, cocking his head to one side.

 

“Lance and I had a fight,” Keith admits. “I, uh…I thought it would be best if I clear out for a day or two.”

 

Shiro’s mouth pulls to one side. “What about?”

 

“His drinking,” Keith answers flatly. “And he never does anything around the apartment and I’m tired of babysitting his drunk ass all the time—”

 

“And? That’s not all, is it Keith?”

 

He never could hide anything from his brother. Damn him. “Lance thinks I’m cheating on him,” Keith forces himself to admit.

 

“With that guy?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Keith.” Shiro sighs. “Well, you’re not, right?”

 

Keith doesn’t answer.

 

“Oh, _Keith_ —”

 

“Look, what’s done is done, okay?” Keith snaps, and it comes out harsher than he had intended. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

He _knows_ how hard Shiro’s judging him, but thankfully they’re both distracted by a soft set of footsteps coming down the stairs and Shiro’s girlfriend appears, blinking. “Shiro, what’s going on? Who’s here?” She catches sight of Keith and frowns. “Keith?”

 

“Hey, Allura,” Keith mumbles.

 

“Keith needs a place to crash for a few days,” Shiro tells Allura.

 

She rolls her eyes. “The guest room is open.”

 

“You heard her.” Shiro turns back to Keith. “You need help taking your stuff upstairs?”

 

“No, I got it.” He leans down and undoes the catch to Red’s cat carrier and she streaks out immediately, vanishing into the dark depths of the house, presumably to sulk. “Thanks, Shiro. Allura.”

 

But Allura is already heading back up the stairs and Shiro is starting to follow her. “We’ll talk in the morning,” he promises before they’re both gone and Keith is left to lug his shit into what he’s pretty sure is the guest bedroom. He throws his shit on the foot on the bed and collapses on the mattress, and his mind can’t help but wander to how the hell he got himself in this situation.

 

_That guy_ was Jah’mire, and he was a first year grad student in the same astrophysics program that Keith was in. His eyes were dark and deep and his voice was intoxicating and at first it had just been a little bit of harmless flirting, a lingering glance and a hand left on a thigh a second too long, until suddenly harmless flirting wasn’t so harmless anymore. And it wasn’t like Keith was really _unhappy_ with Lance, persay, but he also couldn’t say with any sort of confidence that he was really, truly _happy._ And Jah’mire was new and exciting and Keith was reveling in feeling really _wanted_ again. And then one night—he wasn’t really sure at all what had come over him, he just knew that he was angry at whatever little thing Lance had done to annoy him that day and he was tired of pulling one hundred percent of the weight in a relationship that he seemed to be getting nothing out of and so he let Jah’mire kiss him and keep kissing him and then emotional cheating had suddenly become actual, real, cheating, all in the space of a couple of minutes.

 

A mistake was all it was, really, and a mistake it might’ve stayed, if it hadn’t happened again.

 

And again.

 

The fourth time it happened, he watched the autumn leaves swirl outside the window and it hit him that he was having an affair, and that if his relationship wasn’t doomed before, it certainly was now.

 

Keith dreams that he’s lying on his bed, except instead of Lance on top of him it’s a dark faceless form with shadows for arms that wrap around his wrists and ankles and tie him fast and fill his mouth and ears and his heart is pounding against his chest and he tries to scream but he can’t breathe—

 

He struggles awake and realizes that it isn’t shadows choking him, but a mound of fluffy ginger fur curled up on his face. He shoves Red away grumpily, and she merely blinks at him with indignant amber eyes before stalking away with her tail in the air. “Asshole,” he mutters.

 

A knock at the door distracts him. “Yeah?” he calls.

 

The door handle turns and Shiro enters, balancing a tray with two steaming mugs on his metal prosthetic arm. “Sleep well?”

 

“I guess,” Keith mutters, remembering his dream with a shudder.

 

Shiro settles at the food of the bed and passes Keith a mug. “Now,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

 

And Keith does.

 

When the whole sordid tale is finished, Shiro leans back against the wall and sighs. “Wow. You really fucked up, didn’t you?”

 

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

 

They’re quiet for a long time, and Keith can’t help but think of all the other times that they’ve been like this. Every single thing that went wrong with his life growing up, he always found comfort in his brother’s presence—when his date stood him up at the eighth-grade dance, when he started high school and realized that he was starting to get interested in the boys in his grade the same way they were getting interested in the girls, when he lost his virginity at senior prom and his date didn’t call him back the next morning, he’s always somehow found himself right back here, curled up next to Shiro with a warm drink in his hands.

 

And that made never failed to make it better, somehow.

 

“So do you think you’re going to go back there?” Shiro asks him, bringing him roughly back to Earth.

 

“I…I’m not sure.”

 

“You can’t avoid him forever, you know.”

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”

 

Keith blinks. “You sure?”

 

Shiro waves his hand impatiently. “Allura’s cool with it, don’t worry. And it’s not like we don’t have the space.”

 

Keith couldn’t argue with that. Allura ran the North American branch of her father’s London-based investment company, and Shiro had gone to work with her after retiring from the Air Force. The two of them had more money than he was probably ever going to make in his lifetime, and their house…definitely reflected that.

 

“Speaking of Allura,” Keith ventured, “She, uh…didn’t seem too thrilled to see me last night.”

 

(Not that she’s ever really happy to see him anyways, but last night was worse than usual.)

 

“Don’t take it personally,” Shiro told him. “She’s got…a lot on her mind, at the moment.”

 

“Work?” Keith guessed, and frowned when Shiro’s dark eyes flickered to the mug in his hands. “Shiro?”

 

“She’s…Allura’s pregnant.”

 

“Oh.” Well, Keith…was definitely not expecting that. “Umm…congrats? Does Mom know?”

 

“Not yet. We’re planning to tell everyone at Christmas, if things are still going…okay, by then. First trimester rule, y’know.”

 

“How far along is she?”

 

“She thinks six or seven weeks. We’re going to the doctors on Friday.”

 

“Oh wow.” Keith blinks again, and laugher bubbles up in his throat. “Shiro, this is amazing! You’re gonna be a dad!”

 

Shiro smiles slightly, and reaches over and squeezes Keith’s hand for a second before getting up. “Thanks, Keith.” He leaves, the door swinging shut behind him with a soft click, and Keith just kind of sits in silence for a second and tries to wrap his head around the fact that he’s going to be an _uncle._

 

Finally, a piece of good news to celebrate.

And as for the not-so-good news, Keith has six missed calls and a string of texts from Lance.

 

**LANCE: Keith where r u**

**LANCE: Keith cmon answer me**

**LANCE: I know ur there**

**LANCE: cant we just talk about this**

**LANCE: Keith bby pls**

**LANCE: im sorry**

**LANCE: i love you**

Keith sighs and rolls over. It’s stupid, he knows, but he was kind of hoping to be able to sulk in private for a few days while he got his thoughts together.

 

(But then again, this is _Lance_ , after all.)

 

 He taps a quick reply.

 

**ME: Yeah we need to talk**

Lance’s reply was instantaneous, which doesn’t help the guilt starting to build in Keith’s stomach.

 

**LANCE: Usual place, half an hour?**

**ME: better make it an hour**

**LANCE: See you then.**

 

The usual spot is a bench on the nature trail that curves around the university campus. It has a good view of the river that cuts through the city and is just far enough from the trail with just enough to cover to make it perfect for private liaisons. Keith gets there first and settles in to wait, his breath billowing in front of him as he grips the coffee cup in both hands in a feeble attempt to warm them.

 

“Told you you should stop cutting the fingers off your gloves, mullet.”

 

Keith starts a bit as Lance sits down next to him, and he suddenly finds himself unable to even look in his boyfriend’s general direction. He can’t bring himself to speak.

 

Lance is quiet too. “Why’d you leave?” he asks eventually.

 

Keith sighs. “You know why.”

 

They’re both silent for a while. “So, what?” Lance says softly. “Is this it? Are we done?”

 

And Keith desperately wants to tell him that no, they aren’t, that he’s sorry and he’ll come home and it’ll be like nothing ever changed and—

 

And it’ll be like nothing ever changed.

 

Days and months and years will pass, and nothing will ever change.

 

“Yeah,” he says instead. “We’re done.”

 

Silence for a long while.

 

“Guess I should’ve seen this coming,” Lance mutters bitterly.

 

“It’s been coming for a while,” Keith answers softly. Then—“I slept with him, you know.”

 

“Yeah,” Lance sighs. “I know.”

 

“I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

 

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have.”

 

Again with the silence.

 

“You got a place to stay?” Lance asks suddenly.

 

“What?” Keith’s a little taken aback by the question. “I, uh—yeah. Shiro said I can stay with him till I can find a place.”

 

“Alright.” Lance stands, and tosses him something that Keith fumbles for, but catches. It’s his key to his apartment, the one that he left sitting on the counter when he left. “You left some stuff,” Lance tells him flatly. “You can come by whenever to grab it.”

 

“Oh, uh. Yeah. I will.”

 

Lance starts to walk away. “Well, see you, then, I guess.”

 

“See you,” Keith echoes.

 

And Lance leaves, and the first freezing snowflakes begin to fall, and Keith realizes that, for the first time in a long time, he’s alone.


End file.
